Five people rescued almost two days after plane crashes into alligator-infested swamp

Five people have been rescued from an alligator-infested swamp almost two days after their plane crashed in the Amazonian jungle in Bolivia.

The small aircraft, carrying the pilot, three women and a child, crashed on Wednesday, but the group were not rescued until Friday morning, the Bolivian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

None of the group were seriously injured and they survived on chocolate and cassava flour during the ordeal.

The plane had taken off from the Baures municipality in northern Bolivia and was bound for the city of Trinidad, the Ministry said.

An hour after take-off, the pilot reported technical issues before all contact with the aircraft was lost, according to the Ministry.

The pilot, identified by local media outlets as 27-year-old Pablo Andrés Velarde, was able to carry out an emergency landing but landed near an alligator nest, he told local outlet Unitel.

“We fell into a swamp, and right next to it, there was an alligator nest. But thanks to the fuel that spilled from the aircraft, it contaminated the water and the strong smell of that scared them off, not completely, but they didn’t approach us to attack us,” he told Unitel in an interview from his hospital bed on Friday.

One survivor, Mirtha Fuentes, told local media of her emotional disbelief after surviving the plane crash. “We all cried with happiness because we were alive, with bruises, but alive and very lucky, thanks to God and the pilot’s quick thinking and intelligence,” she told Unitel.

Bolivia’s defense ministry and civil defense activated a search and rescue operation, but the first 48 hours were hindered by “adverse weather conditions,” the ministry said. Multiple flights passed over the survivors but failed to spot them, local media reported.

The group survived on rationed food recovered by the pilot from the submerged plane, the pilot told Unitel, before they were discovered by fishermen early Friday morning.

The five survivors were airlifted to the city of Trinidad, in a rescue helicopter from Bolivia’s Air Force, the defense ministry said.

“Thanks to the work of our specialized personnel, at this time the five rescued individuals, including a child, are alive and we are making every effort to take them to safe areas and provide them with the medical attention they need,” Bolivian president Luis Arce said in a statement.